


in all her complexity

by queenieofaces



Series: a wizard named B. Ham [3]
Category: New World Magischola (Live-Action Roleplaying Game)
Genre: (Bea's mom's family is Puerto Rican if that wasn't clear from context), (how is that not a tag already), 9 pages of emotions about being mixed race and Latinx and queer and ace, Asexual Character, F/F, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, NWM1, lots of cameos by various other students as well, mixed race character, moral of the story: queer futurity is real and birds are great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 11:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8487406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenieofaces/pseuds/queenieofaces
Summary: She is many things packed into one tiny frame, and some days it’s too much, but most days it just is.(Can be read as a sequel to "chivalry for mindreaders" and "advanced theories of relationality" or on its own.  See notes for warnings and spoilers.)





	

Her mother takes her husband's last name when she marries, sheds Vargas for Hamilton. Her mother’s family isn't happy--not with the name change, not with the move from Solaris to Destiny, not with any of it--but her mother is in love and that matters more than her family's approval.

Beatrisa Alejandra Hamilton takes her father's last name and the first names of her grandmother (Beatrice) and abuela (Alejandra). Her father suggests naming her Beatrice Alejandra, but her mother says, “Beatrice Hamilton sounds like a white girl,” and that's the end of that argument.

Beatrisa is raised on plantains and pasta, enchiladas and mashed potatoes. She is raised on fairytales and fables and Arthurian legends, stories of knights and kings and fair maidens, tales of daring and danger featuring protagonists who look nothing like her. She is lectured in English, scolded in Spanish, and loved in both.

***

Beatrisa has spent countless hours imagining how her magic will manifest. Maybe it will be a crack of lightning, a bolt from the blue. Maybe she'll send something flying, make a seed bloom into flower overnight, transform a teacup into a toad. Maybe, she thinks hopefully, after yet another tumble out of a tree, she'll be a healer like her parents, will mend her skinned knees and bruised elbows before her mother can see and scold her for being careless.

Instead, the sadness begins creeping up on her just after her ninth birthday, a strange emptiness that nestles beneath her ribs. Hers is the magic of hearing unvoiced thoughts, of feeling hidden pain, of uncovering buried secrets.

This is not the magic Bea would have chosen, but we don't always get what we want.

***

The Bartering Birch gives her a choice: give up her necklace (a worthless thing, really, only worth a few cents at best, given by her abuela to her mother and then her mother to her) or solve an arithmancy problem that is frankly too complicated for an eleven-year-old.

It takes her half an hour, but Bea sails over the walls of P2A4 wearing the worthless necklace.

(Six years later, the cheap chain finally snaps during her trial by drowning. She is too busy running to mourn its loss.)

***

Bea quickly learns that P2A4 was not built for people like her, was not built with space for children who code-switch and have unusual names.

Spanish slips away from her and she lets it--she has no need for it here. After a few weeks of being called “Beatrice” and, worse, “Beatrice-uh,” she starts introducing herself as “Beatrisa, but B is fine.”

She makes herself small, makes herself quiet, fights with her hair to make it lie flat and look straight. She wishes she had her mother’s nimble fingers to tuck and pull every stray curl into a tidy braid, to smooth down the frizz and weave in bright hair ribbons.  She wishes she weren’t a Hamilton, or were more of a Hamilton.  She wishes she were wholly one thing instead of bits and pieces of lots of things.

***

This is magic for Bea: the bright flash of emotion that accompanies every brush of fingertips, every moment of skin against skin. This is magic: the popping behind her eyes when someone _thinks too loudly_ , the stickiness of her classmates’ emotional debris piling around her. This is magic: the realization that it's easy, trivial for her to step out of her mind and into someone else's, to examine the contents at her leisure.

Bea wears long sleeves, creates a physical barrier between herself and the rest of the world.  She holds herself apart, shies away from contact, is careful to leave a buffer of space when she sits, stands, moves. She builds mental shields, learns to filter out all but the strongest emotions. She teaches herself to shove aside her own feelings, pack them in a box and stash them in a corner of her mind where she can ignore them.

In her dormitory at night she listens to her roommates’ breathing and very intentionally keeps herself in her own mind.

***

Her teachers call her Hamilton, see her as an extension of her father's family legacy.

Her tormentors call her cruel names, loudly so everyone hears or silently so only she does.

Xel calls her Beatrisa, doesn't drop a single syllable, saves her a seat and teaches her basic warding.

Vita calls her Bea, keeps the syllables rounded instead of nasal, has strong enough mental shields that being around her isn't exhausting.

Bea signs her letters B. Ham, writes Beatrisa A. Hamilton on her homework, initials with BAH.

After a week of migraines, once she realizes that she probably won't be expelled for unlawful use of mind magic, she stops trying to make herself small, stops introducing herself with an easy out. She is Beatrisa Alejandra Hamilton, and they would all do well to remember that. Names can have a kind of magic, and this is hers.

(She still goes by B, still goes by Bea, will still answer to Beatrice with a grimace, and there's a kind of magic in that too.)

***

This is magic for Bea: a song about frogs to cure a skinned knee, her mother rubbing her injury and singing over her crocodile tears. This is magic: rescuing spiders instead of killing them--“You can't kill something with a soul,” she tells her roommates as she scoops one up from their bedroom floor with a drinking glass. This is magic: slipping into the back of a mundane movie theatre with her father, being transported to another world for an hour or two. This is magic: holding her breath in tunnels and hopping over cracks in the pavement and always skipping the last stair.

This is superstition and this is culture, family stories and childhood memories, but this is also magic.  She can’t draw a line between what she learns from textbooks, what she learns from experience, and what she learns from bedtime stories and household rules.  

Names have power.  She calls it all magic, and so it is.

***

Much of the magic she learns at P2A4 doesn't come easy. She's rubbish at dueling, subpar at anything that requires improvisation or thinking on her feet, genuinely terrible at cryptozoology. She's not _bad_ at most magic, per se; she just has to work at it. She likes Ritual Magic, likes Arithmancy and Numerology, likes things that require meticulous planning and careful calculation. She can do well in Elemental Magic, as long as she studies hard and practices harder, can scrape by in Divination with methodical interpretation that grasps the basic meaning but lacks the flare of true insight.

Mindreading, on the other hand, comes easy. Mindreading feels like a natural extension of her body, like part of who she is. She doesn't have to think about it, doesn't have to work at it--in fact, it takes effort for her _not_ to use it.  She holds herself back in Mind Magic, creates pages and pages of rules to constrain and regulate her mindreading, even as she shoves herself forward in every other subject, gets by on sheer effort and pure determination.

She doesn't think of herself as smart or talented, just a hard worker, but magic has never cared about that distinction.

***

Bea has her father's family name, her grandmother and abuela’s first names, her mother's hair and her father's laugh. She is half her father and half her mother and, on the whole, something entirely different. All of the women in her mother’s family have been healers, for as long as her mother can remember. Her father is a healer and his father was an artificier and _his_ father was a marshal. Bea is a mindreader, cannot stop being a mindreader no matter how hard she tries.

She hasn't spoken to her father's family since he left, never met her mother’s family. She knows who she is, knows where she comes from in the broadest sense, but doesn’t know the specifics. She's never been to Solaris, never seen where her mother grew up. She knows half of her family through her mother’s stories, the other half through hazy childhood memories. She knows more about her father's side, but identifies more strongly with her mother’s.

Bea is born and raised in Destiny, believes in fate, can clamber through a window or find the entrance to a secret passage with the best of them. She has pelo malo and instinctively scolds in Spanish. She wears vests and ties like armor, holds herself to impossible standards, lifts her chin and wields her name like a sword. She is many things packed into one tiny frame, and some days it’s too much, but most days it just _is_.

***

Bea knows when and where she is different, has always been viscerally aware of any and all deviations from the norm. She has brushed against countless minds, caught glimpses of people's most private thoughts, seen the infinite diversity of humanity up close and personal.

She knows, for example, that she doesn’t experience attraction in the way most of her peers do. She doesn't feel the same physical pull, the itch to touch, doesn't want to be daydreamed about or desired. No one makes her heart flutter, and when her peers talk about who they _like_ like, who they think is hot, she stays quiet and searches for an escape route.

She knows, too, that she isn't a puzzle missing a piece, a person with a hole where her heart should be. She cares, she loves, just in a different way--sometimes her chest aches and her head spins with how much she feels before she manages to box it up and shove it aside.

She worries, once, in those wee hours of the morning that seem to compel their inhabitants to existential contemplation, that this isn't really _her_. She worries that this is just her magic getting in the way of her experiencing the world “normally,” as it often does. She wonders if in a different universe, one where she isn't a mindreader, she is still asexual.

The next morning the thought seems so silly and unverifiable that she discards it without voicing it.

***

This is magic for Bea: an amalgamation of techniques, bedtime stories half remembered, trial and error to find something that feels _right_. This is magic: tying hair ribbons to her belt loops, guiding her mindreading with a piece of home. This is magic: spelling a ring after her fifteenth birthday, creating yet another buffer between herself and the rest of the world, wearing her heart on a hematite band. This is magic: taking all the disparate parts of _who she is_ \--her heritage, her schooling, her identity--and forging something entirely new, making space where there used to be none.

***

When she sees Jos and thinks, _Oh no_ , realizes that her feelings might not be entirely platonic, she does not suddenly become whole. She has never had a piece missing, never been incomplete--she has always loved too hard and cared too much. This is new, different, unexpected, but it is not _more_.

She panics because she doesn't know what to do with this feeling, whether to box it up and shove it away or act on it (whatever that would mean). She worries about the ethical implications of poking around in the mind of someone for whom she has nebulous and ill-defined feelings. She does not panic because of Jos’s gender--her inclinations have been clear from the outset, even if their exact nature has not. She does not worry about her friends’ reactions--they already accept and support her, even if they don't know all the details.

The Magimundi has not always been kind to Bea, has not always had space for people like her, but this is one place, at least, where it has.

***

Bea knows her mother’s family from stories, her father's from holiday visits before her ninth birthday. She is part of a sprawling and venerable family tree, even if she hasn't seen much beyond her own branch.

But family isn't determined by blood alone. Family is determined by whispered conversations and shared secrets. Family is determined by who you turn to for support, who is unconditionally on your side. Family is determined by who you come out to, who makes you feel safe and whole. Family is determined by who makes space for you.

Family is determined, sometimes, by initiations in the dark, by squabbles at the breakfast table and study groups in the common room, by a shared set of values. Family is determined, sometimes, by a traceable lineage, mentor to mentee, stretching backward and forward in time, a vine rather than a tree. Family is determined, sometimes, by standing together, by protecting each other, by holding each other accountable.

Family can have a kind of magic, and this is hers.

***

Bea is not planning on telling anyone how she feels about Jos, is planning on shoving her feelings in a box and stashing them in a corner as she always has, but, of course, things do not go as planned. Monty finds out and then Nate, and both of them are determined to not let it drop. Monty approaches the problem in the most primaschola way possible, tries to set Bea up with Jos and manages to get himself horribly entangled. Nate is more subtle, quiet encouragement laced with bits of information at mealtimes

Jos asks Arthur to the formal and is turned down. Bea hates how pleased she is when Jos tells her, hates the way hope wells up in her chest. She has no proof that Jos likes her as anything other than a friend--has evidence, in fact, to the contrary--but still, she hopes.

Bea asks Jos to the formal, and Jos says yes. It is only after her nerves have quieted, only after her racing pulse slows and her shaking hands still, that she realizes Jos may have misunderstood her intentions.

***

All of them put something of themselves into the Dan Obeah initiation--that is how the magic works. All of them contribute their hopes for the coming year, their desire for transformation and change. All of them contribute their presence, their will, their intention. All of them contribute their magic, and with those bits and pieces they make something powerful to protect each other for the rest of the year.  

Bea likes ritual magic at this scale, likes the structure and beauty of it, likes being a small part of something bigger than herself. There is space for her here in all her complexity--there is space for all of them in all their complexity. That is how the magic works: a moment of disclosure, a pledge to improve themselves and the world around them, witnessed and affirmed by the house. They exist in all their complexity and imperfection, rough edges and room to grow, and together they make space.

***

This is magic for Bea: Jos grabbing her hand, Bea dragging herself out of Kathryn’s vision using the point of contact as an anchor. This is magic: Jos’s fear and concern leaking through, Bea apologizing even as she grips tighter. This is magic: Bea sobbing and shaking on the ground but knowing that she is cared for, that she is loved, even if not in the way she wants.

This is not the magic Bea would have chosen, but we don't always get what we want.

***

The difficulty with being a mindreader, the difficulty with holding herself back and shielding herself from all but the strongest emotions, is that Bea cannot control what she sees, what she learns, what she knows about those around her. She can pick up the general contours of emotions without trying, feels flares of anger across the cafeteria, simmering frustration in the common room, sudden buoyant joy in the dormitory. A brush of fingertips transmits a stray thought, clasped hands allow memories to slip through, a collision in the hallway imparts bruises and knowledge of Calisayla’s next big prank.

The difficulty with being a mindreader is that she misses context, lacks information, fails to read between the lines. She gets bits and pieces, the beginnings of threads, and then holds herself back instead of pursuing them. She assumes the best (or the worst), ignores contradictions and warning signs, gathers information but does not analyze it critically.

She could find out how Jos feels about her, could pick and pry without her noticing, but that wouldn't be _right_ , so she just stands beside her and hopes.

She accidentally sees a snippet of memory when Professor Jin asks her to take Persie’s hand in Ritual Magic, but she can't understand the blood and bending of minds to her will, so she apologizes to Persie and doesn't think of it again.

She is bowled over by Jayden coming out, by James coming clean, by revelations she could have seen coming, _should_ have seen coming.

The difficulty with being a mindreader is less her magic and more how she chooses to use it.

There are some bits of her identity, of _who she is_ , that she did not, could not choose, but she chose this.

***

Bea wears a vest and tie to the formal, wears her hair down, wears her ring, wears her heart on her sleeve. She brings her wand, brings her ribbons, brings herself in all her complexity.

She does not feel pretty, but pretty has never been the goal. She feels like herself, and that is enough.

***

Arthur leads Jos onto the dance floor, looks every inch the dashing price Bea will never be. Jos looks beautiful, Jos looks _happy_ , and Bea doesn't want to wreck that. Jos deserves the world, and Bea knows she can't give it to her.

Bea has always loved too hard and cared too much, but she has never learned to be selfish, has never learned that even girls who are too many things packed into one tiny frame are allowed to want things. She holds herself to impossible standards, shoves herself into ill-fitting molds, expects herself to be everything and nothing.

She can imagine only fairytale endings, but fairytales have never had space for someone like her.

***

Thank goodness for Monty, the hopeless romantic, nudging and coaxing and offering a voice of reason. Thank goodness for Savia Burke with a well-timed compliment. Thank goodness for the Magimundi, for all its faults, being kind and having space for someone like her.

***

Bea tells Jos, in stumbling words and meandering sentences, how she feels about her. She has no practice talking about her own feelings, has no vocabulary to describe an emotion that is nebulous and ill-defined. She is terrified, but she has to say something, has to be clear. She has no expectations, no intended outcome. She is many things, but she does not want to be a coward.

Jos listens. Jos doesn't spit or flee or curse her name. Jos apologizes for not catching on sooner.

Jos offers her hand, and Bea takes it.

This is not the ending Bea would have chosen, but we don't always get what we want.

***

Bea misses the first meeting of the New World Magischola Queer Alliance--she is too busy dashing around the formal, transmitting messages and brainstorming strategies. She still manages to finds her people, intentionally and unexpectedly, in earnest conversations and brave confessions, moments of stillness and solidarity punctuating her otherwise hectic evening.

Bea did not choose her family of origin, but blood is not the end all and be all. Call it found family or chosen community, queer kids banding together in the face of a heteronormative world or young adults rejoicing in shared experience--it has a kind of magic, regardless. She chooses the people who matter to her, and they choose her back. Together, they make space.

***

Bea is her parents’ daughter, looks like her mother and has her father's family name. Bea is a graduate of P2A4, has hung and burned and drowned and _survived_. Bea is a mindreader, knows humanity at its worst as well as its best. Bea is a raven, can trace her lineage in magic and community as well as blood. Bea is queer, is asexual, loves too hard and cares too much. Bea is many things packed into one tiny frame, and some days it’s too much, but today it just _is_.

Bea is, and that is enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally the first time I've written fiction about the experience of being mixed race. It's also the first time I've used the word "asexual" in a piece of fiction, I think. Lots of firsts.
> 
> Bea and I share a lot of identity labels, but the way we engage with them is quite different, so it was fun (and occasionally heart-breaking) to think about how someone coming out of a fundamentally different worldview and experiences would inhabit the world.
> 
> Necessary warnings: a lot of this story deals with the weirdness of existing in liminal spaces and having "complicated" identities. There are some microaggressions and casual racism, but mainly self-invalidation and self-hatred (or, at minimum, self-profound-discomfort).
> 
> Spoilers: I don't know? I don't think there are any, at this point, other than backstory for Bea.


End file.
